A man who set up and carried out the arson of a Near West Side liquor store that killed two women who worked there has been arrested and charged almost 18 years after the killings, authorities said Tuesday.
Lemanuel Jackson, 46, of Green Bay, Wis., is the third person charged in the arson killings of Annie Reed, 39, and Hatari Smith, 25, at Mike & Sons Food and Liquor, 1359 W. Roosevelt Road, on Nov. 25, 2000.
He was ordered held without bail Tuesday in a hearing before Cook County Judge Michael Clancy, according to state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton.
Jackson set up the arson as part of a fraud scheme to try to collect insurance money, according to prosecutors.
Eric Brocks, 34, is serving life in prison in connection with the killings after being convicted of murder in the case in December 2013, while the getaway driver, Johnny Sims, pleaded guilty to arson in a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to eight years in prison, according to records.
Jackson, who was on court supervision in an unrelated Wisconsin case, had a warrant issued for his arrest on a murder charge just before Brocks went to trial, according to court records and prosecutors.
In 2000, Jackson recruited Brocks and Sims, who was dating and living with Jackson’s sister in Wisconsin at the time, to help him set fire to the store, supposedly for insurance fraud purposes, according to prosecutors and court records.
Jackson and his girlfriend had given Jackson’s sister and Sims a blue Pontiac Grand Am, and in November 2000, Sims and Jackson’s sister drove the car to Chicago from Wisconsin for a visit, according to Sims’ testimony in Brocks’ trial.
When they were getting ready to return, Sims asked to borrow $100 from Jackson for the trip, and Jackson said he was planning to set a store on fire for insurance money, and Sims could have the money after that, according to the testimony recounted in court records.
Sims testified he told Jackson he didn’t want to be part of the arson but agreed to drive Jackson and Brocks on errands — which ended up including taking Brocks to buy a container of gasoline the day before the fire.
About 11:30 a.m. Nov. 25, 2000, several people saw a Grand Am drive up to near the entrance to the store and two black males get out of the car, put on ski masks and go into the store, prosecutors said.
The pair poured gasoline around part of the store, then lit it on fire, causing a wall of flame to block the entrance and exit of the store, prosecutors said.
Reed, of the 1400 block of West 14th Street — originally identified in Tribune stories as Annie Edwards — and Smith, 25, of the 1200 block of South Throop Street, were killed. A customer who was checking out with Reed at the time of the fire testified at Brocks’ trial that when Brocks threw a burning matchbook on a potato chip rack he had doused in gasoline, setting it on fire, Reed panicked and ran upstairs, according to court records.
Reed and Smith were found in a second-floor office, where they had been overcome by carbon monoxide, prosecutors said.
Smith was the middle daughter of six girls and had worked at the store on and off for seven years, her mother told the Tribune at the time of the fire.
After setting the fire, the two men ran back to the Grand Am and witnesses saw them yell to the driver to leave.
The owners of the store ultimately collected $262,000 in insurance money, according to testimony at Brocks’ trial, but there was no link made between the owners and Jackson.
In October 2006 a man arrested on federal drug charges said that at the time of the arson, he lived in Wisconsin and knew Brocks. The man told investigators and later testified that Brocks had fled Chicago with Sims after the fire and both told the man about the arson, according to prosecutors and court records.
Brocks was charged in 2010 and convicted in 2013, and Sims, who testified against Brocks, pleaded guilty, according to court records.
Jackson was arrested about 12:35 p.m. Monday in Crown Point, Indiana, police said.
Jackson has a 2001 weapons charge conviction in Cook County, for which he served 60 days in jail and was sentenced to probation. He also has felony drug, escape and fleeing convictions in Wisconsin, according to records.
Jackson is due back in court April 23.
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